Mistletoe
by AnikaHadrur
Summary: They meet under the mistletoe, and somethings begins. Of discoveries and soulmates, and darkness. A fivepart story.
1. 1: Take Care If You Kiss Me

A short five-part story about meetings and mysteries. All opening quotes are taken from _At The Television Set_ by Edwin Morgan.

**Mistletoe**

_Take care if you kiss me,  
you know it doesn't die  
_

She comes in late to the party, calves aching from hacking a path through the snow. It's crept through her socks to numb her toes and tangled in her hair to nestle like pieces of broken glass. She shines in the light and wonders if anyone knows it is the bloody pieces of her heart hung in her hair, sparkling and cold. Her tongue scours the last snowflakes from her lips, swallowing down the bitter winter.

She hates the feel of a broken heart, but most of all she hates the feel of it mending. It's just an invitation to do it all again, the flat exchange of words and snarling press of bodies. Just when she gets used to the warmth in the night, half the bed is empty – she just isn't big enough to fill the space alone.

She came because she thought this might be better, you know – there'll be wine, enough to make the world a little warmer, and she can fake delight well enough to survive the shallow social whirl. She prides herself on her fakery these days.

He's in the hall when she arrives, some boy twisting the stem of an empty glass between his fingers. Red clings to it, cherry-bright, a strange colour for wine. Punch, perhaps.

He barely catches her eye – it's the glass she wants, but full, not empty; it's acid in her mouth, acid down her throat to corrode her indifferent pain. She's bored with herself, bored with her broken heart, bored of her boredom.

She hates that, too.

There was a time when she felt each breath burn like fire into her throat. It wasn't so long ago, that time, and it might not be so far away either, but right now it dances beyond her reach. It was a great loss, her happiness, but her life hasn't been swept by tragedy or seared with passion. It was just one small moment that cut her, and then another, a little later. A cruel word, a thoughtless gesture, an indifferent day, slice, slice, slice, and she bled from a thousand cuts, able only to watch bemused as her life trickled out of her hands.

She dusts her heartbreak from her hair, impatient with it all.

"Cold out." He interrupts her silence, ignorant of his rudeness.

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

The small talk is done with. She has made her contribution, and he can write her off as petty and sharp. Off come her gloves, her scarf, her coat, stripping her down to let out the warmth she has secreted between her arms and thighs all the way here.

"Well, you don't seem very observant."

Those words are serrated, and they draw enough blood to interest her.

There's barely a hint of a smile on his face, but she has seen too many masks that masquerade as smiles to care about that. It's his eyes she seeks, wide and dark and dreadfully intimate, assessing her as she assesses him. The rest she categorises only for reference: mussed dark hair, fading tan, round cheekbones, arched eyebrows.

She lets her eyes linger on him and gathers the jagged edges of her heart to wound him. Just as a warning. Just as a reminder. "I've seen enough. And I've seen better."

"I've seen worse…but not much worse." The words come out well-spiced with wickedness, and she feels the impact of them like the clash of sword on sword; a deft parry, a spark of devilment in his eyes, and she is captured.

She doesn't know it then, of course: all she feels is the challenge, the pleasure of a battle. "I guess you haven't looked in a mirror lately."

He laughs and it's low and rough and soft. "I can just look at the admiration in people's eyes instead. I know my worth."

"Is that why you're out here on your own?" She curses herself. Questions makes it personal, questions beget questions and she is unwilling to let this stranger pry his fingers into the chinks of her soul and lever her apart to find his answers.

She loves her loneliness as much as she loathes it.

"I wanted some space. No one's going to come out here."

The next question is already on her tongue but she bites it back, glad that her mistake slid by. No questions, no invasions, just meaningless banter. It fills the time, if not her heart.

"They keep avoiding the hall." He gazes upwards, his lashes feathered against the hollows of his eyes. "Can't imagine why."

Like the North Star, he guides her and she looks up, up, up…and there it is, a cluster of curvy leaves and ivory berries, poison dangling over her, waiting to be transfused into a kiss.

Their eyes meet and he does not move, does not do anything except roll that glass between his fingers. Then he straightens, and her feet have retreated before she knows it.

His smile is beautiful and terrible, a white mockery of the moon. He waggles the glass at her. "I need a refill."

He moves into the party, away from the charmed silence of the hall. She stares after him, wondering why she stepped back, wondering why she cares. A brush of lips, stranger to stranger, it's nothing, it's commonplace, it's a cheap tradition.

And he looks back: their eyes meet, and her breath catches in her throat with the intensity of it. For a moment, his eyes seem silver, as if touched by moonlight. Just a glance, sharing nothing...but the thought of what they might share, what might comes to pass under poison and leaves is suddenly hot and bright in her mind. That wicked smile against her mouth, melting away into pressure and pinpricks; his body against hers, the wine glass forgotten on the floor.

"Coming?" he asks, and before she can form an answer in her dry throat, he vanishes into the throng.

And after a moment, she follows him into the clamour and wine-soaked air, lying to herself that she isn't chasing the promise of a kiss.

~*~


	2. 2: Turn Now To Face Me

A huge thank you to everyone kind enough to review last time!

**Mistletoe**

_I half see you, half know you  
Take care if you turn now to face me  
_

She slips into the bustling room, a moth among butterflies. The chatter and the gossip hold little interest for her, but she throws in a word here and there. A joke, a barbed bit of wit, _hello_ and _how are you_, a chorus of twittering cockatoos.

Seriousness isn't welcome in the festive gathering; the talk is all froth and bubbles, like the champagne they pass around, and she abides by their convention from civility and habit. It's as much her camouflage as it is theirs. She seeks out the boy, hungry, hunting, the beginnings of fascination fizzing in her stomach.

Their eyes meet. Yes, across a crowded room - she revels in the cliché. It's almost a private joke, shared in that skittish glance that lasts a handful of seconds. The flash of his smile is unexpected, crafting a brief electric intimacy, and it takes on a wicked slant as he beckons her with one finger.

She waits a few moments, just to prove she can, just to prove he has no hold over her. And then she gives in, and winds through the crowds towards him, her movements measured, leisured, dipping into conversations she has no care for to deny him any whiff of a victory.

Looking up, she finds him gone. He has moved away, sinking into another net of conversation. She begins to sense the shape of this game, teasing, subtle, intensely private.

He spares her a glance over his shoulder, the intent clear: _come and catch me, if you want me._

The seduction of his absence is stealthy and novel. She could refuse the invitation, she supposes, but why? To tend her hollow heart, which is already halfway to healing? She'd just be wallowing in self-pity, and she really can't see the point.

It gives her a dark, snug pleasure to think of them playing hide and seek among unknowing acquaintances. A child's game, elevated with an adult's intent.

And so she comes to know him at a distance; over shoulders and framed in gaps between bodies, perceived through the reactions of others. A volley of laughter from one group, a woman's scandalous gasp a moment later. Clinking glasses, and the cool murmur of his voice, muffled under a dozen other conversations. His path is revealed by the noise he leaves in his wake, this chaos butterfly of high order, and in the brief clashes of their eyes which bring to her dark, declious thoughts: of tangled covers, heavy heat, of rhythm and creaks and wonder.

She cannot explain his magnetism, only acknowledge it.

The distance between them reduces down, mutual gravity drawing them closer. She becomes used to the languid rhythms of his speech – quickening only to deliver some sharpened phrase, little verbal blades that leave those puddles of laughter. Puzzled laughter, she comes to realise, from people unsure if the joke is on them.

And ending another breezy conversation, she turns – and he is there, his stage smile as fake as hers. They remain alone, the privacy of a possible couple respected by a roomful of people who live on vicarious thrills.

"Well, fancy seeing you here," he says, amusement curling under the words. "I didn't frighten you off, then."

"I think you overestimate yourself," she answers, testing him as he has been testing her.

"Not in the slightest. I know exactly what I'm capable of." He rolls the words on his tongue like an actor, but she can't fault his delivery. "All sorts of nefarious things."

"Then I don't think a girl of my good standing should risk her reputation with you."

"You're probably right," he agrees, and leans in. She doesn't shrink back; this is a confrontation, after all, and so the space between them shrinks down to petal-thinness, his hand light and impersonal on her shoulder, his voice anything but as his breath brushes her ear. "Well, if standing won't do, I'm perfectly prepared to risk your reputation sitting down."

Startled laughter escapes her, and he's stepped back, bottom lip between his teeth, wearing a demure expression that just doesn't match up to the purring promise in those words.

"Risk it or ruin it?"

"Oh, whichever's more fun." He takes a sip from his glass, full now, and the dark red liquid leaves a brief stain on his mouth before he licks it off; the image stays with her, only it's her lipstick he's tasting, the lingering traces of her lips.

She loves and loathes the feel of desire; it's bright and sharp and intoxicating, the first notes of what will inevitably be a requiem: all things end, that's her mantra. She tries to harden her heart with it, but never succeeds. Desire leads to pleasure, to gratification, to soft words and caresses, and to time passing. Enough time passing, and the soft words become laced with regret; one way or another, she's left bereft.

Such is her existence, moving from person to person in a dance echoed by everyone in the world. A familiar routine, longing for the first flush of love, certain one day the first flush will never fade, equally certain of its effervescence.

And she enjoys it every time. Strangest of all, really – she never learns. Never changes.

"Ruin me, then," she challenges, and meets his eyes, which are dark and secretive and unreadable as the sea.

His glass is drained in one movement, droplets left clinging to the rim, merging and swelling like the hope she's starting to feel, the promise of something new and fresh. "My pleasure."

"What? I thought it was supposed to be mutual." She sweetens the words with a smile, playful as a kitten, claws unsheathed.

"It will be," he answers, tone soft and slow.

Something's beginning, and it delights her as much as it saddens her.

"And will you ruin me in front of a crowd?" she asks, as coy as he is brazen.

His mouth curves. "Certainly not. There's a perfectly good hallway everyone's avoiding." He steps backward, and beckons her once more; behind him, the knots of onlookers part like the curtains drawing back on the first act of a play.

She shrugs off the interested stares as if they're gossamer-light, her attention swallowed by him, leading her on to what may come, though part of her already knows: to an ending. But before that, fragile joys, tender moments, the chance to learn him in character, in mind, in body. Chances she will not pass up.

In his face is the premonition of that kiss, hovering in the space between them that will dwindle to the thinness of heat and clothing, speeding up her heart.

We'll kiss under poison: it's fitting, at least.

In the hallway, under the mistletoe, he waits. And she knows this is the last moment she can turn back; she can change, she can choose.

She chooses him.

~*~


	3. 3:Stars and Forms That Never Let Us Back

An enormous thank you to everyone who commented last time. It's wonderful of you to take time to review.

**Mistletoe****  
**

_For even in this room, we are moving out through stars  
and forms that never let us back_

Everywhere he goes, he is a stranger.

It's a nomad's life, one he's lived for, oh, decades and decades. His youth is a simple disguise; change the clothes, add the latest slang and even his dearest acquaintances forget eventually. And he does like to check up on them: a visit here, murmuring of family ties, a gift now and then if they struggle, trinkets for the people he collects like charms on a bracelet, stringing their hearts on his wrist.

They never forget him, and they never remember him either. _That nice young man_, they say to him when he calls again, still in the peak of life when they have become old and crinkled._ You look a bit like him, you know. He had a lovely smile._

Like a whispered blessing, he leaves peace behind him. All he takes in return is a little blood, enough to sustain him, slipping down his throat with feverish heat. It's a fair exchange: sweet memories for sweet life.

Others might find it lonely, this carousel of faces and places, but he prizes it. An eternal traveller, he wheels through the world, drinking in all it has to offer. It changes as much as he does, and so he always finds new excitement.

He's ridden camels across the desert, trying to learn Arabic and sending his guides into fits of mirth as he spat out sand and dust and nonsense. Like a sore thumb, he stuck out as a tourist in Parisian cafés, gulping down coffee and clumsily reading the newspaper. He even hacked through the jungles of Ecuador once, but he wasn't fond of the insects or the hallucinogenic quality of the light, all dappled green shadows and knifing beams of sunlight. From there, onto the sprawling metropolis of London, where the smoke-stained monoliths of Victorian England squat alongside shiny glass confectionary, an architectural fairytale of Cinderella and her Ugly Sisters.

In a hundred years, he'll do it all again, and it'll all be different.

He came to his life from necessity, but he loves it now. If he has a home, its walls are the warm press of human bodies, its roof tiled by chatter and news.

And its furnishings are made up of the fascinating and the rare: all those humans who've wrung affection from him during his whistlestop tour of time and space. The ones like her.

From the moment she came in, spattered with glittering snow, he could see she was locked up tightly as an oyster. He saw frailty in her wary face, thin and faded and pretty as pressed violets, and heard strength in her caustic words. A strange mix, and one full of intrigue.

She deflected his questions with ease, and he found himself amused – and a bit insulted – when she darted away from the threat of a mistletoe kiss like a nun fleeing a brothel.

He had already traded a dozen chaste kisses with men and women he'd never met, accompanied by varying degrees of awkwardness and enthusiasm. It was nothing more than formality – but she shied back with something close to fear in her face, and he wondered why.

It turned mere curiosity to enthralment: and so he began a seduction. Not with tender words or light gestures, but with challenge, with raw wit.

_Chase me_, he tells her, and loses himself amid the clusters of oblivious partygoers.

And as they dart through the labyrinth of bodies, he finds himself more and more willing to be caught. Her speech is unaffected and wry, and she skims the room like an insouciant dragonfly, never too personal, warm but distant.

It's an art, and he recognises it as his own. She too is itinerant, a kindred spirit despite her humanity, and his fascination grows as their game progresses. He finds himself distracted – by an expansive gesture, by the way she plays with her hair, eventually by the mere fact of her silence.

At last, they meet, her appeal multiplied by the wait. When he surprises laughter from her, it transforms her, shattering her suspicion, leaving the fresh, wild beauty of a foxglove, bright in her eyes and curving softly on her mouth.

But the respite is brief: and he glimpses something like sadness before she composes herself. What a riddle she is, and he'd like to untangle it, he thinks, while he was tangled up with her one morning, her dark hair fanned across the pillow.

It's been so long since he stayed with anyone for longer than a few days. So long since he's wanted to – since he's felt attraction as strong as this.

And somehow, he finds himself coaxing her out of the nosy crowds, surprised at his own eagerness. Back to that mistletoe, dangling promise and poison, half-wanting to see if she will deny him, half-wanting an excuse to touch her.

~*~

She closes the door behind her, and the sound has the finality of a gunshot. His heart has picked up, and the anticipation is curling up through his stomach, slow and smoky. She feels it too: it's there in her parted lips, waiting in her pale eyes.

There's nothing to say: he only holds out his hands, and this time, there's no sign of fear, only a smooth determination as she moves forward. That's odd in itself, but he thinks little of it.

"I don't usually do this," she tells him, her tone saying she doesn't expect him to believe her.

"Good," he replies. "I like to know I'm special."

She settles into his arms, and it reminds him how much he likes to hold and be held. His loneliness is a constant companion – so much so that he ignores it, barely feels until moments like this, when it crashes in on him just how damn good it is to feel that spark of recognition in someone else.

The heat of her seeps through her clothes, the curve of her hips against his palms hidden by mass-produced designs and cheap fabric. Her hands are a pleasant weight on his arms, moving back and forth, and he thinks that if he were a cat, he'd be purring right about now. She smells of soap and snow and that faint, neutral scent he thinks of as human, and he doesn't do anything but savour her. He's in no hurry.

"Are you always this arrogant?" she asks, but there's amusement peppering the words.

He pretends to consider it. "Sometimes I'm bearable."

It wins him a smile, and before he's expecting it, her fingers tighten on his arms, as if she doesn't want him to escape – _fine by me_, he has time to think – and her mouth brushes his, light and tantalizing, a prelude-

And then he feels an impact so violent he thinks for one moment that the house is tumbling down around them. Images assail him in a silent barrage, as if he's zooming through the world at the speed of sound, encased in a silent, terrifying bubble.

Blood on someone's gaudy carpet, tacky and cheery-red – daubed on fingers, a wild glimpse of a room in chaos, furniture hurled about and the door half-hanging off its hinges. Jolting through the room – someone running, he realises, stumbling into a bathroom to grip the sink and stare up at the mirror.

It's her face. Younger, maybe three or four years ago, as pale as flour except for her mouth, which is a violent crimson slash across her face – smeared with blood, that's why. And on her neck, there, she touches the two gaping wounds from which red rivulets ooze. Her eyes are too bright, rings of steel in an otherwise human face.

He knows at once what happened to her, but before he can take a breath, he is shuttled into another memory.

This time, she's in a littered alleyway and a man stands before her, gesturing. From the strain on his face, he's shouting, but in this mute world, meaning is made into pantomime. His clothes are tattered and dirty, the rain slicking his hair into a shiny helmet, but his fangs are white and dazzling in the streetlight.

The view drops: she's on her knees, hands clasped in front of her. Whatever she's pleading for, it rouses only fury in that man who looks as though he should be begging at her feet. His fist fills her vision; streaks of grey and red obliterate everything.

"No more!" It's her voice screaming, he realises, as if from a great distance. "What's happening? What are you doing to me, you monster!"

The words hit him hard. He's never been called that, not by a human.

Somehow, he focuses, though her memories crowd about him like hungry ghosts; through the haze of swirling colour he can make out her and the hallway. Hasn't he heard of this before, this unasked-for invasion? It's impossible to think with tableaus of carnage and grief nibbling at his mind.

His hands are cradling her face, for some reason – he doesn't remember doing that, so he snatches them back. As if a portcullis has dropped shut, the images vanish, and he is left breathless, aghast.

She cowers back, all that earlier fear streaming through her eyes. It's terrible to behold, and he reaches out instinctively.

"Keep away from me!" She knows what he is, no doubt about that, and if she's been attacked by some vagrant vampire, no wonder she's so frightened. Her ragged voice is full of vitriol. "Don't you touch me. Don't. You. Touch. Me. I know what you are."

He cannot deny it: to him, it's nothing terrible. "Part of the Nightworld. A vampire." Her breath hisses in, and he needs to tell her that he's no monster, that he's loved and been loved, that he's never hurt a living person. "What happened to you..." he begins.

Her hand chops across the air like a guillotine. "It's none of your business."

"But you're my..." Suddenly the word is there, springing to his lips. "You're my soulmate."

Befuddled, feral, she stares at him. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

_Everything_, he wants to say, and suddenly the long years of travel fall into place like the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It was no aimless journey, no matter that he liked to fool himself. No, in all those years, all spilling through his hands like salt, all those humans he's loved and sometimes lost, he's been searching for someone, seeking out the still and sacred point of his life.

He's been waiting for her.

But he can't put it into words without sounding overblown or downright obsessive, so he only says, "It's nothing to be afraid of."

Her laugh lashes across the air like a whip, and her fear is transformed into something harder and sharper. "I'll be the judge of that."

Jury and executioner too, he thinks at the ferocity that animates her face, bringing out not beauty but grotesquery. Her mouth is distorted, her eyes glacial. He glimpsed her strength earlier, but he had no idea that it was born of cruelty.

He's helpless in the face of her hostility. He's never been the target of such direct hate: blind hatred, indistinct hatred, mere dislike, yes, but those things are facts of life. It wasn't him who savaged her, nor him who introduced her to the dark lustre of the Nightworld. Yet he is the one flayed under her unforgiving eyes.

"Let me by," she orders.

He tries one last time. "Please..."

Fury explodes into her face. "Let me by!" She wrenches aside her hair, exposing her neck – he sees her scars then, two spots as iridescent as the inside of a shell. "Or are you going to finish the job?"

Horrified, he can only stammer denials, and then she is storming past him; he cringes back, her anger so tangible he's afraid it will smother him.

One movement, and she's grabbed her coat, leaving early just as she entered late. He can hear the flurries of snow against the door, thumping hard as his heart is. When she opens the door, it sweeps in, dashing against her skin, but she doesn't flinch.

Before she leaves, she turns, harsh and beautiful against the grey night, a winter queen upon her throne. Only he, who knows the secret of the scars beneath her hair, can see the edge of vulnerability.

He fumbles for the words, desperate not to lose her who he has only just found.

Her mouth seems as vibrant as the mistletoe berries. But her voice is shaken, softer than he expected; for a fleeting instant, he thinks regrets flares in her face and he seems to feel it as intensely as he did her rage. "Don't try to find me. I'll make you regret it."

And he is abandoned, this blessed wanderer, staring at the place where she stood.

~*~


End file.
